Media Today, 4th Edition
Chapter Recaps and Study Guide
Chapter 3: Controls on Media Content:
Government Regulation, Self-Regulation, and Ethics
After studying this chapter, you will be able to:
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Explain the reasons for and the theories underlying media regulation.
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Identify and describe the different types of media regulation.
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Analyze the struggle between citizens and regulatory agencies in the search for
information.
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Discuss the internal and external ways media organizations self-regulate.
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Identify and evaluate ethical dilemmas facing media practitioners today.
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Harness your media literacy skills to comprehend how media regulation affects
you as a consumer.
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Government regulations have a tremendous impact on the kinds of businesses
media firms can enter as well as the kinds of materials they are allowed to create
and show to audiences.
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Government officials often encourage media companies to regulate themselves,
and this leads media executives worrying about government punishment
following actions taken by media companies.
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In addition to government regulation, media executives inevitably decide what
moral principles and ethics will guide their decisions.
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Media executives and their companies are also subject to an array of pressures
brought to bear on their companies by outside advocacy groups.
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When we talk about regulation with regard to mass media, we mean laws and
guidelines that influence the way media companies produce, distribute or exhibit
materials for audiences.
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We define regulation of mass media as the laws and guidelines that influence the
way media companies produce, distribute or exhibit materials for audiences.

Scholars who compare media systems around the world describe four different
approaches to government regulation—authoritarian, communist, libertarian, and
social responsibility. (Figure 3.1)
o Authoritarian approaches to media regulation are typically adopted by
dictators who want to keep themselves and the elite backing them in direct
control over all aspects of their society.
o Communist approaches depart from authoritarian ones, however, in the
way they justify this control.
o On the other end of the spectrum from authoritarian and communist
approaches to media control are libertarian approaches, which are
grounded in a belief in the marketplace of ideas.
o Social responsibility approaches to government regulation believe that the
real competition over ideas that libertarians prefer will never happen
without government laws to encourage companies to be socially
responsible with respect to encouraging a diversity of voices and ideas.
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Political influences, economic influences and/or cultural influences may help
explain the differences between the ways countries translate the same approach
into actual regulation.
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In the United States, the legal foundation for government’s relationship to the
press (and, by extension, what we call the mass media) is the First Amendment to
the Constitution.
o In Gitlow v. New York (1925), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the
phrase “Congress shall make no law,” as it is written in the First
Amendment, should be interpreted as “government and its agencies shall
make no law,” regardless of locale or level of government.
o In recent decades, court decisions and political interpretations of what
precisely the First Amendment means by “the press” have expanded to
include all types of mass media, not just the journalistic press.
 In Burstyn v. Wilson (1952), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that
films were protected by the First Amendment.
 In CBS v. Democratic National Committee, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that television and radio were protected by the First
Amendment.
 In Time Inc. v. Hill (1967), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
entertainment content of media were protected by the First
Amendment.
 In Virginia State Board of Pharmacy et al. v. Virginia Citizens
Consumer Council, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled advertising and
other forms of commercial speech were protected by the First
Amendment.

The Supreme Court has often approved government restrictions to abridge speech
of the press that place limits on the time, place, and manner of expression. Such
restrictions are legal if they:
o Are applicable to everyone.
o Are without political bias.
o Serve a significant governmental interest.
o Leave ample alternative ways for the communication to take place.
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The level of protection that the U.S. government provides depends upon the type
of speech (Figure 3.3)

Certain kinds of media regulation are constitutional, and these regulations can be
divided into three categories:
o Regulation of content before it is distributed
 Obscenity: Material can be judged obscene, and therefore be
subject to prior restraint, based on a three-part test:
 An average person, applying current standards of the
community, would have to find that the work as an entirety
reflects an obsessive interest in sex.
 The work has to portray in a clearly offensive manner—in
pictures or in writing—certain conduct specifically
described as unallowable by state law.
 A reasonable person has to agree that the work lacks
serious literary, artistic, scientific, or political usefulness.

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the
government has a right to censorship via prior restraint when the
national security of the United States is at stake, but the Court has
made it clear that national security is defined quite narrowly.
 The regulation and control of media content prior to
publication during wartime military operations has taken
place since the Civil War.
 The military has developed strategies to control and shape
wartime reporting, using pool reporting and embedded
reporting and discouraging so-called unilaterals.

The Supreme Court has held that speech can be limited before it is
distributed if the result of that speech is likely to pose a threat to
society. Courts first used the bad tendency test to evaluate potential
harm, but inherent problems with the test eventually gave way to
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ clear and present danger test.

According to the U.S. Constitution, the purpose of copyright is “to
promote the progress of science and the useful arts.”
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The hesitancy of government agencies to stop the press
from circulating content through prior restraint does not
apply to copyright violations.
The Copyright Act of 1976 lays out the basic rules of
copyright law as it exists in the U.S. today.
Fair use regulations allow writers and academics to use
small portions of copyrighted material without permission.
Fair use is typically supportive of nonprofit, educational
uses of copyrighted material, and of uses that do no harm to
the original work or that significantly transform the original
work with added interpretations, including parodies of the
original work.
The Supreme Court has allowed prior restraint of primary
and secondary school newspapers if the publication of such
a newspaper is part of the school’s curriculum.

The right to free speech, as protected under the First Amendment,
often comes into conflict when it comes up against the right to a
fair trial, as protected under the Sixth Amendment, and is another
area in which prior restraint is often allowed, through gag orders.

Commercial speech may be subject to prior restraint if it appears to
be false or misleading.
o Regulation of content after it is distributed.
 Defamation is a highly disreputable or false statement about a
living person or an organization that causes injury to the reputation
that a substantial group of people hold for that person or entity.
 Libel is a form of published defamation, including libel per
se (so-called “red flag” words) and libel per quod (words
that become libelous because of their context)
 Slander is a form of spoken defamation.
 There are two categories of libel plaintiffs: public figures
and private persons.
 The U.S. Supreme Court has defined actual malice as
reckless disregard for truth or knowledge of falsity; the
Court has defined simple malice as ill will toward another
person.
 The Court has defined simple negligence as lack of
reasonable care by media organizations.
 A plaintiff in a libel suit must prove these five elements
apply to the case in order to prove libel:
o The defamatory statements were published.
o The defamatory statements identified the plaintiff
(although not necessarily by name).
o The defamatory statements harmed the plaintiff.
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The FCC and content regulation.
 The Court has accepted the idea that the FCC can limit
broadcast content in a limited way.
o The FCC has determined that broadcast TV stations
must provide three hours a week of educational
programming aimed at children.
o The FCC has determined that broadcasters must
provide equal amounts of time during comparable
parts of the day to all legally qualified candidates
for public office.
o The FCC has set aside the so-called Fairness
Doctrine that required broadcasters to provide
balance in the presentation of controversial issues.
o The power of the FCC rests in its ability to fine
stations and, under some circumstances, to revoke
station licenses.
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o The defendant was at fault.
o The defamatory statements were false.
Defenses in libel suits include:
o Truth
o Privilege
o Fair comment and criticism.
Privacy—the right to be protected from unwanted
intrusions or disclosures—is a broad area of the law when it
comes to media industries, and includes false light,
appropriation, public disclosure, and intrusion.
o In our current digital age, privacy is being invaded
in new and different ways. In the United States,
laws like the Cable Telecommunications Act of
1984 and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection
Act aim to protect people from media firms and
other companies that illegally obtain information
and invade the privacy of private citizens.
Economic regulations placed on media organizations greatly affect the ways in
which those organizations finance, produce, exhibit, and distribute their products.
o One way that regulators who want to expand the marketplace for ideas can
do so without directly making rules about content is by limiting excessive
market control by mass media corporations.
o Excessive market control can lead to situations of oligopoly or even
monopoly.
o Anti-trust policies aim to ensure competition in the U.S. economy, through
enforcement of laws by the U.S. Justice Department.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) are the two most important Federal agencies involved in
regulating the mass media.
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Although opportunities for prior restraint on publication by governments are
rather limited under the U.S. Constitution, government officials have tried other
ways to prevent journalists from gaining access to certain types of information.
o One way that the government can limit speech—especially speech about
the workings of the government—is to restrict access to government
documents and meetings.
o Journalists often claim evidentiary privilege in order to protect
confidential sources, but the privilege is not always granted by the courts.
o On the federal level a major victory for openness came in the form of the
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows citizens to request
government records and reports that have not yet been made public, with
these nine restrictions:
 National security
 Agency interpersonal activities
 Statutory exemptions
 Trade secrets
 Some intra-agency and inter-agency memos
 Issues involving personal privacy
 Police investigations
 Protection of government-regulated financial institutions
 Information about oil and gas wells.
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Many states have passed so-called sunshine laws, which ensure that government
meetings and reports are made available to the press and members of the public.
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Press organizations have managed to convince legislators in 30 states and the
District of Columbia to pass shield laws that afford the media varying degrees of
protection against being forced to disclose information about their sources.
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A number of pressures, both external and internal to the media industry, are aimed
at ensuring that media professionals conduct forms of self-regulation and operate
an ethical manner.
o External pressures to self-regulate include various stakeholders: members
of the public, advocacy organizations or pressure groups, academics, and
advertisers.
o Internal self-regulation can take a number of forms, including editorial
standards (specified in policy books, operating policies, and editorial
policies) and ombudspersons at the level of individual organizations, as
well as professional codes of ethics, content ratings, press councils and
journalism reviews at the industry level.
o Most media organizations have established editorial standards, or written
statements of policy and conduct.
o Professional codes of ethics are often administered by societies or
associations that companies have established to represent their interests to
the outside world as well as to forces within their businesses that might be
acting in ways members consider unprofessional.
o Another way that media organizations regulate themselves is through the
adoption of ratings systems like those in the TV, film, and video game
industries.
o Press councils differ from ombudspersons because they are made up of
more than one person, and they are not directly employed by any one
media organization.
o Journalism reviews are yet another external force that helps the media to
self-regulate.
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Ethics is a system of principles about what is right that guides a person’s actions.
o By applying one or more classical approaches to ethics, we can better
evaluate—from an ethics standpoint, at least—our behavior and the
behavior of others.
o Aristotle’s Golden Mean represents the average of the extreme actions
between the intellectual and moral virtues.
o The Judeo-Christian ethic, also known as the Golden Rule, refers to the
admonition to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
o Emmanuel Kant’s theory of the categorical imperative holds that the
individuals should follow ethical principles as if they could be applied in
any situation.
o The phrase, “the greatest good for the greatest number,” is the foundation
of John Stuart Mill’s principle of utility.
o John Rawls’ veil of ignorance theory holds that in any given situation
justice emerges only when all parties are treated without social
differentiation.
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Bob Steele outlines the following model (10 questions that you ask yourself) that
media literate persons and media professionals can use to evaluate decisions and
to make good ethical decisions:
o What do I know? What do I need to know?
o What are my ethical concerns?
o What is my journalistic (or informational, entertainment, advertising, or
educational) purpose?
o What organizational policies and professional guidelines should I
consider?
o How can I include other people, with different perspectives and diverse
ideas, in the decision-making process?
o Who are the stakeholders—those affected by my decision? What are their
motivations? Which are legitimate?
o What if the roles were reversed? How would I feel if I were in the shoes of
one of the stakeholders?
o What are the possible consequences of my actions in the short term? In the
long run?
o What are my alternatives to maximize my truth-telling responsibility and
minimize harm?
o Can I clearly and fully justify my thinking and my decision to my
colleagues? To the stakeholders? To the public?
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Media ethics scholars Mark Fackler, Kim Rotzoll, and Clifford Christians have
identified a list of the five main duties of media professionals—all of which can
and do cause knotty ethical situations.
o Duty to self
o Duty to audience
o Duty to the employer
o Duty to promise holders
o Duty to society.
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Ethical standards regarding the mass media often relate to at least three levels—
the personal, professional and societal, and ethical actions involve values, ideals,
and principles.
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Sometimes people who work in mass media organizations might feel strong
conflicts among the various duties they have and among the various ethical
standards to which they try to subscribe.
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Even if you’re not a media practitioner, thinking seriously about the formal and
informal controls on the media content you see and hear each day is crucial to
your role as a critical consumer of media.